


Lamentation

by NorthernLights37



Series: Lamentation [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Destiny, F/M, Fate, Fire Magic, Freeform, I guess Dark Jon and Dark Dany, Resurrection, Some Sex, Suicide Attempts, Though I still prefer morally gray, Volantis, dragon hatching, post-season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21572644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernLights37/pseuds/NorthernLights37
Summary: Lamentation:  noun, the passionate expression of grief or sorrow; weeping
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: Lamentation [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555984
Comments: 58
Kudos: 196





	Lamentation

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little dark nugget after all the commentary uproar yesterday :) Similar in tone to another fic I wrote, post-Season 8, called Lightbringer, but this is probably both darker and bloodier.
> 
> I'm of the opinion that both Jon and Dany were horribly OOC in Season 8. This fic just takes their actions at face value, both of them, combined with the DarkJon we probably should have gotten post-resurrection. If you're a Jon-hater or Dany-hater I doubt you'll like this. If you wanna bitch in the comments, I mean do your thing, but I would ask that other readers not engage. I just don't give enough of a shit about someone hating this to get into big arguments about it. We got what we got, I was in a fuck Westeros kinda mood, so here we go :)

The first time he tries to end his life is three years after he has taken hers.

The Wildlings had borne his presence as long as they could, but when he would not raid, or murder, they cast him out.

Life is hard, beyond the Wall, and those who do not pull their own weight are not allowed to remain.

Even Tormund had grown tired of his silence, of his slowly-spiraling madness, and it was something of a blessing, to be alone again.

But he wasn’t really alone.

Jon looks across the campfire, to the red-robed woman who has built it, who has brought his body from the river he’d thrown himself into, after slitting his wrists. His furs have turned to ice, against his skin, but he burns.

“The Red God has given you a most precious gift,” the woman whispers. He has never seen her before, and he hopes he never sees her again. Ghost lays nearby, but even his wolf will not look at him, not right now. “It is not yours to give back.”

He thinks, miserably, that the wolf is ashamed.

“I don’t want it,” he grinds out, between clenched teeth, looking at the bindings on his arms. “I never have.” Over and over again he says these words, but no one listens. No one ever listened to him, they just used him, and he knows now what a fool he was.

There has only ever been one, who really cared, and Jon bows his head as it plays again in his mind, the press of his lips on hers, the thrust of the dagger, the hot spill of blood over his hand, the betrayal in her eyes. Deep within his dead heart, there is only the wish that her dragon had ended him, then and there.

Living is so much worse than dying, because he has done both, and existence is nothing more than one of the seven hells, he thinks.

“It doesn’t matter what you want, dragon son.” He winces at the words, feels that traitorous hot welling of tears in his eyes, because this is the thing he cannot escape.

Every night he wonders what might have been, had he not been so blind, so bloody fucking stupid, had he followed his heart and not his mind. But he was so lost, in his own confusion, so unsure in his despair, that he had chosen.

Kinslayer. That’s what he is now. He had told himself that he had to protect his family, from her.

But his family had betrayed him as well. He had been exiled, cut off from the world, while they took the Seven Kingdoms for their own, so Sansa could play at Queen and Bran could do…whatever the fuck it was Bran did now.

He doesn’t care, anymore.

She was his family, too.

She’d had no one but him.

Jon doesn’t know how to love, anymore. That part of him is dead, and he knows because he killed it.

But he has learned something new, in the space that loss has created.

He has learned to hate.

He hates the Starks, and their self-righteous claim to honor, when he knows there is little honor in what Bran has done, what Sansa has done. Arya is long lost to the sea, but even for her he has only bitterness in his heart now.

He hates Westeros, hopes each and every citizen gets exactly what they deserve, hopes their new King is as much of a failure as Jon anticipates him being.

He hates the snow, and ice that surround him.

He hates the breath he draws.

He hates that he lives.

But most of all, he hates himself, and as he looks at the strange woman across the campfire he wonders how she knew, how her Red God had known what he was doing.

He doesn’t care enough to ask, and stares into the fire.

\---------

The second time Jon tries to end his life is seven years after he has taken hers, and when he awakes beside a campfire, again, he curses and sits up to find his leg broken and bound in a splint.

“The Red God has given you a most precious gift,” the red-robed woman says, her eyes piercing him from across the dancing flames. “It is not yours to give back.”

Jon looks around but does not see Ghost, and his heart begins to pound, because the wolf is all he has left.

When she raises a long, bone-white finger, and points to a mound of white in the distance, he screams, ragged and broken, but he cannot stand, cannot lift his sword to make her pay.

“Only death can pay for life, dragon son. And so many deaths have paid for yours. But he gave his willingly, if such thing matters to you.”

He curses into the night, stares up into the stars, and begs whatever Gods that might be listening to have mercy, to end him, then and there. He cannot take another day of this.

He is going mad, but he is not yet mad enough that he doesn’t recognize it.

Targaryen madness, he thinks, and his screams of grief turn to shrieking laughter as he buries his head in his hands. The only cure for that was a dagger to the chest, wasn’t that what he’d been told?

“Kill me,” he gasps, but the priestess only shakes her head. “Kill me, for your Red God. Surely he cannot want one so mad as me to serve his will.”

She tips her head at him, scarlet hair dipping along her shoulder. “Do you know what happened to Azor Ahai, after he killed his beloved Nissa Nissa?” She stokes the flame with a long stick, but her eyes are trained on his.

“I am not him. I am not that.” The words taste bitter in his mouth, but he forces them out. Perhaps he is mad, but he will claim no false heroism in what he did to her, there before the throne another Aegon had built. Azor Ahai had spilled blood to save, Jon had done so because he was just a pawn, in a game he had not recognized until it was far too late. “I am no hero.”

“No,” the woman agrees, and the twist of hate he feels for her is a soothing balm. It feels good, to hate. “There are no heroes.” Her lips twitch, and his hatred grows as she smiles at him. “Poor Azor Ahai went mad, for he could never wash that stain away, the blood of the one who loved him most.”

A name whispers in his mind, and hate is a knife in his heart, one he wishes were real.

She had loved him, so very much, and he would give anything, do anything to undo what he has done.

But he can’t.

Not even the Red Witch can.

“We will see each other again, Aegon.” He hangs his head at that accursed name. “You shall pay your penance, then R’hllor shall take your measure.”

She is gone, in a gust of wind, and Jon wonders if she was ever there.

His leg is broken, and he is mad, and now he is finally alone.

It is what he deserves, he thinks, as he looks at Ghost’s body. He crawls to his small tent and sleeps, and prays, as he does every night, that he will not awake.

\----------

The third time he tries to end his life is ten years after he has taken hers.

When he awakes, fire crackling in his ears, there is no campfire; He is not amidst the ice and snow.

He is in a place he does not know, surrounded by figures in red robes, and they force foul smelling liquids down his throat.

He has tried to poison himself, that much remembers, but once more R’hllor has denied him.

Everything goes black as, finally, he swallows, and finally, finally, Jon is done fighting.

There is nothing left to fight for.

There is only hate.

Hate for everyone, and everything, but most especially himself.

He welcomes the blackness that creeps in, and hopes, as ever, that this is where it ends.

\---------

This is where it begins.

This room, the cramped quarters, a cot, a basin, a bucket and a mirror, has been his for a moon.

Madness has truly settled in now, flaring like flames in his blood, and in it he has found peace, at last.

Nothing is wanted of him, here. No one speaks to him, silent, red-robed figures leaving trays of tasteless food outside his door.

He only exists, and everything else has fallen away.

One day things change.

It is her, the red-robed woman who would not let him die, that knocks on his door.

He sets down the razor he has used to shave his face, running a hand along the smoothness, so foreign to him. The man he used to be, the stupid boy who had hoped and dreamed for things best not wanted, had let the hair grow because that was the way of his people.

But the truth he had realized, in this cloistered silence, was that he had no people.

Only himself.

“Come,” she bids him, and the word sounds strange, after so long in silence.

He does not answer, only stands, and follows. There is nothing left to him but to obey. He is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled, with *something*. Anything.

He is led to a temple.

Eyes of every color follow his progress, a flash of red around every corner, until he is at the heart of the building.

He might look around, try to take the measure of the place, if it was in him to escape, to fight his way to freedom.

But freedom, he knows, is nothing but an illusion. No one is free.

_All men must serve, all men must die._

Her voice echoes in his ears, and he hates, once more.

Jon had thought himself a noble hero, but he was the villain all along, just as she was. Dragons did not belong amongst men, for dragons consume and dragons burn and dragons, she had whispered to him, tangled up in his skin, dragons plant no trees.

He is what he is, and who he is, and there are none here who care.

A dragon screeches above, somewhere in the sky, and he begins to tremble, though he does not truly know if it is joy or fear that stirs him. He does not reckon it matters.

He is taken to a room, full of red-robed figures, their faces shrouded in shadow. At the center of the room there is a great pit, and in this great pit a fire rages.

He smiles, his face feeling as though it will crack, those muscles screaming from disuse. He has had no reason to smile in a very long time.

They lead him to stand before the flames, and hands without faces strip his robes from him, until he is naked as his name day. He does not care. Let them see the horrors on his skin, the scars he has caused, the scars caused by others. Let them see the monster, he thinks, as the flames rise higher.

Two figures step forward, on the other side of the flames, and his knees give way when he sees her face, her silver hair braided into an intricate crown above her brow. She stares at him, purple eyes glowing orange in the reflected fire. She knows him, and he knows her, and he should have known, all along.

Her dragon would never have let her die.

He wonders if she has been here the whole time, her heart burning with R’hllor’s resurrected fire, just as his does. He wonders if she feels as cursed by this gift as he does.

“Stand,” she orders, and her voice is a thousand knives upon his ears, his heart, and his vision blurs as he struggles to his feet, because now he feels again, and he hates this as well.

He can see the figure beside her, just at height with her, and when the boy draws back his hood he falls to the floor once more, his knees banging onto the stone, hard enough to bruise, and he is prostrate before them both. He throws back his head and howls, with grief and rage and unbearable sadness, because the boy’s face is his, unmistakably, and he knows the measure of what he has done.

He screams and curses all the Gods, and the names of those he knows, throws them all into the air, into the fire. If she is a monster then he is too, and he has never wanted to die as much as he has in this moment. This is the truth, and he welcomes the pain now as he did before, in these years without her, lets it slide through his veins like glass, cutting and scraping raw, fresh wounds into his heart.

He screams until he can scream no more, and when all that his left is his rasping, scraping moan, there are hands on his arms, pulling him painfully to his feet.

“R’hllor shall test you now, dragon son.” The boys voice is smooth and sibilant, so pleasing to his ear that it aches, and his small hand points to the flames. “The fire shall take you or the fire shall cleanse you, but you will enter all the same.”

“Ten years’ penance have you paid,” she says, challenge in her eyes though her voice holds no inflection at all, “the same as I. Will you burn, or will it consume you, I wonder?”

Jon peers into the flames, where the boy points. This boy is his son, his blood and flesh and bone.

He is an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.

Now he knows, as he sees what is at the heart of the flames, what it is that will fill him.

Now he has a purpose.

He nods, and does not look at the boy, only at her.

Daenerys is her name, and he has not let his mind touch those syllables in a decade, but it is the beautiful, terrible song his heart sings as he steps into the fire and takes the object that awaits him.

He holds the dragon egg in his hands, and kneels, and weeps.

Finally, finally, he wants to live.

The egg cracks, as the red-robed figures begin to chant.

The flames rise higher, and he surrenders what is left of the man he was, and his heart burns inside his chest.

He is the fire, and the fire is him.

He burns.

He lives.

\---------

His son is called Aerion.

It is a good name.

It is a Targaryen name.

They are all R’hllor’s children here, the boy tells him, three moons after he hatches a dragon there in R’hllor’s temple.

He expects the boy to hate him, has prepared himself for a dagger in the chest from the moment the lad entered the room.

The boy tells him many things, in his small quarters. He tells a tale of the Dragon Mother, borne to Volantis in the claws of her dragon, resurrected by the Red God, whose stomach grew large with child. He tells of a boy born in the flames, in R’hllor’s red light, a child of prophecy who would cleanse the world in R’hllor’s image.

He tells of a man, lost and alone, the Dragon Father condemned to a land of Ice, who would come when war was upon them, who would train the Chosen, the child, who would prepare him for the wars to come.

The boy steps close to Jon, and he wants to weep at the dark beauty of the boy’s face, at the perfect balance of his features and Dany’s, and then the boy’s warm hands are upon his face.

“You must let go. You must help me, father. You must be the shield that guards my back.”

Jon’s dragon screeches from it’s cage by the window, alerting Jon to his hunger. Ember is the creature’s name, the one that persists, even when the fire seems gone. The ember is what remains, this he knows, and the red-scaled dragon is his constant companion, now.

“It has to be you,” the boy continues. “It has to be her.” He leans close and kisses Jon’s cheek, sweetly, and he embraces the boy tightly. This is all that matters, all that has ever mattered. This is his son, and he will see the world burn to protect him. “It has to be us. Do you understand?”

Jon pulls back to stare into the boy’s eyes; They are neither Stark gray or Targaryen purple. They are the orange-red of a glowing fire. They are Jon’s home, now, and he does not care for anything else. “Aye,” he rasps out. “Fire and blood,” he whispers, and the boy, *his son* gives him a brilliant smile.

“Every knee shall bend, father. And the world shall be ours.”

He steps back, regarding Jon solemnly, as though he knows what the cost will be, as though his fire eyes have cast themselves into the future, and he has accepted a terrible truth. But then the look his gone, and his ancient eyes are young again, and he reaches out a hand to Jon. “Come, father,” he beckons. “And bring your dragon. The Mother awaits us.”

\---------

She teaches him how to care for the small creature, and she takes him into her bed.

He burns, and she burns, and he rids himself of every hurt and hate and sorrow with each thrust of his cock into her willing flesh.

This has always been the truth; he has never been more alive than when he is inside her.

The past burns away as her cunt milks him of his seed, as they lay sweaty and gasping in each other’s arms in the silence of her opulent chambers.

“A great change is coming,” she whispers, her nails pricking his shoulders as he takes her again, and he stills only long enough to stare into the eyes he has always loved. “It is useless to fight it. There is no honor left for us. Only fire. Do you understand?” She says the words even as she shudders beneath him, slick and hot, writhing and meeting each slap of his hips against hers.

“Aye,” he says, grunting with effort, suckling at her nipple like a babe, welcoming her sharp nails digging into the column of his neck, hard enough to draw blood. He nips at her lip, and he does draw blood, and he licks it away as she moans. “We shall give him what is his. We shall do what blood demands.” He doesn’t know where the words come from, only that they are the truth, and then he stops thinking at all.

Hours later, glutted on each other, she sits and strokes her fingers along his smooth cheek. “I like you like this. This is the truth of you. No more hiding.”

He tangles his fingers in sex-rumpled silver curls. “You are within your rights to kill me. Right here and now. Bury you blade in my chest just as I did to you.”

Her eyes glitter with torchlight, and she straddles him, leaning down to brush his nose with hers. There is dark promise in her whispered words. “If I wanted to strike you dead I would have done it long ago.” Hands sweep down the planes of his chest. “Our lives are not ours. We must fulfill our purpose. Together.”

It is a command.

It is a question.

“Together,” he says, his hands settling on her hips. “For him.”

The fire burns behind her, and she glows with the light. “For us,” she whispers.

And the night comes alive with the song of dragons.


End file.
